Monday, January 16, 2012

It's always a vigorous conversation around IF World HQ when it comes time for new t-shirts and new paint colors.

This time around we kept it simple for the new tees, both offerings are black. Rather than try to figure out the latest "color X is the new black" debate, we just went with black for both offerings. So hard to go wrong with a black t-shirt... formal and rebellious at the same time.

Offered with our two down tube logos, one of which is the new script that we first introduced last year on the Titanium Factory Lightweight. The script version also features our new seat tube tower logo on the back.

For the classic up and down box version, we went with a gray and orange combination to celebrate the colors of our new showroom and fit studio, The Bike Factory NH.

On the new bike color front, it's a bit of a shot in the dark when it comes to which colors to add to our standard offering of two dozen or so colors (of course we are always happy to match your custom color request).

Once you consider the classic bike colors of black, white, red, silver, and the occasional blue, along with our team green and yellow, it gets to the fringes pretty quick. But the fringe is where the fun is, so we we try to keep it fresh. Last year we added a bunch of muscle car colors like Boss Blue, Barracuda Purple, Sprout Green, and Omaha Orange to go with the Factory Lightweight series, so this year, after we culled out some of less popular selections, we decided to go with:

Dove Gray is for those of you who like a sharp contrast to either a second color, or to your choice of decals, but are played out on white. It looks good on its own, or next to just about anything. I love it with orange (see The Bike Factory Logo and the new t-shirt above).

Nogaro Blue is back for a return engagement. It's an Audi color used in their S-series performance models, and we had it the line-up a few years back. We have been getting more requests for bright blues, and have been told that it is the next trend in bike color, set to rival red for bike color dominance. We'll see how the blue/red bike color smack down plays out, but it's an awesome blue and it's an election year, so equal opportunity and all.

Army Green is probably the biggest flyer here, but I just want to do one bike with red logos on it as an homage to vintage Soviet-era parade vehicles. I always thought it was funny to see military vehicles in polished camouflage colors with bright red logos. Did they repaint them in matte finishes and less visible logos after the parades? Just wondering.